UCSD conference looks at press in Mexico

LA JOLLA  Journalists and scholars from the United States and Mexico are expected to gather at UC San Diego on Wednesday and Thursday to examine press freedom in Mexico.

The conference, “Libertad Bajo Palabra: Censorship, Satire and the Press in Mexico,” opens Wednesday at 5 p.m. with a keynote address by Alfredo Corchado, a longtime Mexico correspondent for the Dallas Morning News and author of the book, “Midnight in Mexico.”

One of the event’s aims is to examine the “almost endemic violence against journalists reporting on the drug trade.”

“It seeks to expand our understanding of what a free press has meant to Mexico during the 20th and 21st centuries,” said organizer Michael Lettieri, a visiting fellow at the Center for U.S.-Mexican Studies.

The conference’s Thursday schedule includes discussions focusing on different aspects of the press in Mexico. They are entitled: The Press and the Public Sphere; the PRI and the Press; Perspectives on Censorship and Democratization, and Contemporary Challenges.

The latter is a roundtable featuring Vicente Calderon, editor of the news site www.tijuanapress.com and Eileen Truax, a Mexican journalist based in Los Angeles whose book, "Dreamers", documents the lives of young deportees.

The event is free and open to the public, but registration is requested. To sign up, click here.